Murdoch Has Been a Malign Influence
Is this the beginning of the end of Murdoch's political influence? Well, let's hope so, says Paul Linford
8 Jul 2011, 00:15
What with the demise of the News of the World and a looming BBC strike, it's certainly been a busy first week in office for Michelle Stanistreet, who took over as the new general secretary of the National Union of Journalists last Friday. I think Michelle had it about right in her response to the Murdochs' announcement of the closure on Thursday afternoon - that the 200 journalists at the title were being made to pay the price for others' mismanagement.
My old lobby colleague David Wooding had a slightly different take on it, but in his TV interview outside the gates of the Wapping plant, the NOTW's assistant editor brilliantly articulated the anger those journalists must now feel.
But while I am sad to see the end of the News of the World, I hope this also marks the beginning of the end of the absurd degree of influence which Rupert Murdoch's media empire has exercised over British politics for more than three decades.
Not once in my entire adult life has a Prime Minister been elected in this country without his explicit support, a state of affairs which has corrupted the body politic much as the phone-hacking scandal has corrupted some sections of British journalism.
It all started fairly innocently in the 1970s, with The Sun making up a quote by Jim Callaghan ("Crisis? What Crisis?") during the Winter of Discontent that, while it did some damage, probably did not do much to alter the result of the 1979 General Election.
But by 1992 it had taken on an altogether more sinister guise, with the infamous 'Kinnock lightbulb' image credited - not least by The Sun itself - as having played the decisive role in swinging one of the tightest elections of modern times. The influence of that single, infamous front page continued well beyond election night. It so terrified the Labour Party that when Tony Blair became leader, he made squaring Murdoch his first priority - with baleful consequences for the future conduct of government.
And the pattern has continued with David Cameron, whose hiring of Andy Coulson and friendship with Rebekah Brooks has possibly left him, in the view of no less a commentator than Peter Oborne, fatally compromised.
I am not arguing that national newspapers should not have party political opinions. Indeed, it helps to differentiate them in what is sometimes a rather overcrowded market place. But when those newspapers start to wield those opinions like a sledgehammer to secure election victories for their favourites and thereby leave governments in their debt, then a line has been crossed in my view.
I fully expect the News of the World to re-emerge as a seven-day Sun - although of course they can't call it the Sunday Sun as rivals Trinity Mirror own that (Newcastle-based) title. But either way, my hope is that a newly-sceptical public might start to take its political interventions with a far larger dose of salt than has hitherto been the case.
If so, then politicians might in turn start to treat the Murdoch titles as just another group of national newspapers - to be cultivated yes, but kowtowed-to, no.
And British politics, as well as British journalism, would be all the healthier for it.
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